Rationalia relies on voluntary donations. There is no obligation of course, but if you value this place and want to see it continue please consider making a small donation towards the forum's running costs.
Details on how to do that can be found here..

"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
Frank Zappa

Rationalia relies on voluntary donations. There is no obligation of course, but if you value this place and want to see it continue please consider making a small donation towards the forum's running costs.
Details on how to do that can be found here..

"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
Frank Zappa

"His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it." —From the OSS’s psychological profile of Adolf Hitler

Encouraged that the cops are doing their job? Not terribly. I'll feel more encouraged when this racism renaissance that we're having begins to wane...

"His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it." —From the OSS’s psychological profile of Adolf Hitler

In today's "racism is very unpopular in America" and "the Republican party isn't racist" news:

The Secret Files of the Master of Modern Republican Gerrymandering

Thomas Hofeller preached secrecy as he remapped American politics from the shadows. The Republican Party operative, known as the master of the modern gerrymander, trained other G.O.P. operatives and legislators nationwide to secure their computer networks, guard access to their maps, and never send e-mails that they didn’t want to see published by the news media. In training sessions for state legislators and junior line drawers, he used a PowerPoint presentation that urged them to “avoid recklessness” and “always be discreet,” and warned that “emails are the tool of the devil.”

Hofeller did not follow his own advice. Before his death, in August, 2018, he saved at least seventy thousand files and several years of e-mails. A review of those records and e-mails—which were recently obtained first by The New Yorker—raises new questions about whether Hofeller unconstitutionally used race data to draw North Carolina’s congressional districts, in 2016. They also suggest that Hofeller was deeply involved in G.O.P. mapmaking nationwide, and include new trails for more potential lawsuits challenging Hofeller’s work, similar to the one on Wednesday which led to the overturning of his state legislative maps in North Carolina.

Hofeller’s files include dozens of intensely detailed studies of North Carolina college students, broken down by race and cross-referenced against the state driver’s-license files to determine whether these students likely possessed the proper I.D. to vote. The studies are dated 2014 and 2015, the years before Hofeller helped Republicans in the state redraw its congressional districts in ways that voting-rights groups said discriminated on the basis of race. North Carolina Republicans said that the maps discriminated based on partisanship but not race. Hofeller’s hard drive also retained a map of North Carolina’s 2017 state judicial gerrymander, with an overlay of the black voting-age population by district, suggesting that these maps—which are currently at the center of a protracted legal battle—might also be a racial gerrymander.

Other files provide new details about Hofeller’s work for Republicans across the country. Hofeller collected data on the citizen voting-age population in North Carolina, Texas, and Arizona, among other states, as far back as 2011. Hofeller was part of a Republican effort to add a citizenship question to the census, which would have allowed political parties to obtain more precise citizenship data ahead of the 2020 redistricting cycle. State legislative lines could then have been drawn based on the number of citizen voters, which Hofeller believed would make it easier to pack Democrats and minorities into fewer districts, giving an advantage to Republicans.

Other documents show that Hofeller was hired by a Massachusetts Republican who sought to use the Voting Rights Act provision for majority/minority seats to draw a single district containing all of Boston, so that Republicans could make inroads into an otherwise entirely Democratic congressional delegation. Hofeller drew several sets of maps, but the effort went nowhere. Additional files document his work in Mississippi, Alabama, and Virginia, among other states.

E-mails also connect Hofeller to redistricting efforts in Florida. Top Republican officials in the state have denied that they played any official role in drawing the state’s legislative and congressional districts in 2011. A 2010 state constitutional amendment barred partisan gerrymandering in Florida. E-mails show that Hofeller communicated with and visited top G.O.P. political operatives in Florida in 2011. The operatives helped organize or draw state legislative and congressional maps that matched the districts that were later enacted. The operatives insisted, at a trial, that drawing the maps was only a hobby. A Florida judge found that argument unconvincing, concluding that the G.O.P. conducted a stealth redistricting operation that snuck partisan maps into the public process and made a “mockery” of the state’s constitutional amendments.

The files mostly pertain to Hofeller’s work in North Carolina, where he drew—and defended in court—the state’s legislative and congressional maps multiple times, after judges ruled them to be either unconstitutionally partisan or racial gerrymanders. The congressional lines that he helped draw in 2016 were struck down by a federal court as a partisan gerrymander; that decision was vacated this past June, in a 5–4 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Perhaps one of the clearest and ugliest gerrymanders in North Carolina—or in the entire nation—is the congressional-district line that cuts in half the nation’s largest historically black college, North Carolina A&T State University, in Greensboro. The district line divided this majority minority campus—and the city—so precisely that it all but guarantees it will be represented in Congress by two Republicans for years to come. North Carolina Republicans have long denied that this line, between the state’s Sixth and Thirteenth Congressional Districts, was intentionally drawn to dilute black voting power, which would be a violation of the constitutional prohibition against racial gerrymandering.

Hofeller’s files, though, show that he created giant databases that detailed the racial makeup, voting patterns, and residence halls of more than a thousand North Carolina A&T students. He also collected similar data that tracked the race, voting patterns, and addresses of tens of thousands of other North Carolina college students. Some spreadsheets have more than fifty different fields with precise racial, gender, and geographic details on thousands of college voters.

"His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it." —From the OSS’s psychological profile of Adolf Hitler

Kathay Feng, the national redistricting director for Common Cause North Carolina, said in an interview with The New York Times that “the Hofeller files are important because they’re the only thing that will allow the American people to know the truth behind the efforts to rig redistricting and elections,” she added. “They have to be made public.”

Lawyer Dalton L. Oldham, who was a consultancy partner with Hofeller, argued that Hofeller’s information was covered by lawyer-client privilege because it contained trade secrets and confidential work for clients like the Republican National Committee. A brief submitted by Oldham stated that “disclosure of these documents would reveal a major political party’s internal, proprietary and highly confidential communications and strategy.”

You might as well say that HR in the Cosa Nostra is also subject to client privilege and commercial confidentiality. But hey, there's nothing illegal about drawing boundaries to ensure you get more votes than anyone else.

Rationalia relies on voluntary donations. There is no obligation of course, but if you value this place and want to see it continue please consider making a small donation towards the forum's running costs.
Details on how to do that can be found here..

"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
Frank Zappa

Jamie R. Riley, the University of Alabama’s assistant vice president and dean of students, resigned from his position on Thursday after less than seven months on the job, UA officials confirmed.

His resignation comes a day after Breitbart News published an article detailing images of past tweets from Riley, in which he criticized the American flag and made a connection between police and racism.

Jackson Fuentes, press secretary for the UA Student Government Association, confirmed at 4:15 p.m. that Riley is no longer working at the University.

“For us right now, basically all I can tell you is that the University and Dr. Riley have mutually agreed to part ways,” Fuentes said. “So yeah, that’s true, and we do wish him the best.”

In an email at 5:03 p.m., assistant director of the Division of Strategic Communications Chris Bryant released an official statement on behalf of the University confirming Riley’s resignation.

“Dr. Jamie Riley has resigned his position at The University of Alabama by mutual agreement,” Bryant said in the email. “Neither party will have any further comments.”

Breitbart News has a reputation for being an ultra-conservative news, opinion and commentary website. The article reads that the author reached out to the University last week to receive a comment on Riley’s past tweets but that a statement was not given. The article also says Riley’s Twitter account appeared as private on Friday morning so only his followers could view his account.

I'm surprised they didn't just pull him over and shoot him in the face.

Rationalia relies on voluntary donations. There is no obligation of course, but if you value this place and want to see it continue please consider making a small donation towards the forum's running costs.
Details on how to do that can be found here..

"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
Frank Zappa

As plantations talk more honestly about slavery, some visitors are pushing back

The backlash is reflected in some online reviews of plantations, including McLeod in Charleston, S.C., where one visitor complained earlier this summer that she “didn’t come to hear a lecture on how the white people treated slaves.”